The Story of Kullervo

JRR Tolkien

Completed 1/17/2019, Reviewed 1/17/2019

3 stars

This is Tolkien’s first short story.  It is an adaptation of a story from the Finnish “Kalevala”, a collection of early Finnish epic stories.  It is also an inspiration for his character Turin Turambar from The Silmarillion and The Children ofHurin.  This book contains the short story, two similar essays by Tolkien on the Kalevala, and commentary and a paper by Professor Verlyn Flieger from U of Maryland.  The short story itself is a rather tough read.  Being his first story, probably from around 1912, he uses archaic words and sentence form.  Fortunately, Professor Flieger’s paper, which compares the Kullervo with Turin, recounts the story and helps make sense of it.

Kullervo is a boy, the second generation offspring of a swan.  While still in the womb of his mother, his father is killed and the family enslaved.  Growing up, he learns of the treachery against his father and grows in resentment and anger.  His name means “wrath”.  He has a twin sister and a magical dog.  The dog gives him talismans which save Kullervo from several attempts on his life.  He continues to grow in resentment, becoming cocky, and learning magic from his dog.  Evil never leaves Kullervo and his life takes a tragic turn in the end. 

As I mentioned above, the story is difficult to understand.  I got the gist of it, but was thankful for the review in Flieger’s analysis.  Tolkien uses different names for the characters which confuses things more.  Being a short story, there isn’t much character development, except for Kullervo.  He grows in anger and orneriness throughout the story.  It reads like a fairy tale, which of course it is based on.  So there’s a lot of action.  This is definitely an extremely early work, with only little of the Tolkien prose which is more evident in the Silmarillion.

However, it is a jumping off point for the story of Turin.  Flieger breaks down the story of Kullervo and compares and contrasts it with the story of Turin, as well as the original tale in the Kalevala.  As primitive as Tolkien’s Kullervo seems, he clearly had big ideas when adapting it into his own work from the Kalevala.  And this germ of a story then blossomed into the very emotionally and psychologically complex Turin.

I give this book three stars out of five.  It is interesting reading for the diehard Tolkien fan.  However, it would probably be lost on the casual reader.  The real intent of the book is Flieger’s paper, and to illuminate us on the origins of a major character in Tolkien’s imaginarium.  The additional two lectures by Tolkien that are included are very similar, one actually having been presented, the other being just about a page and a half short of its conclusion.  They are interesting, and reading two versions of it drives home some ideas.  But again, these are probably only appreciated by the diehard reader.  I wouldn’t recommend this book unless you liked the works recently published by Christopher Tolkien and some of the translation and critical essays by JRRT, like “Beowulf” and The Fall of Arthur.